Editors
The founding editors of the American edition of Heavy Metal were Sean Kelly and Valerie Marchant. The founding Design Director was Peter Kleinman. Kleinman was the Design Director of National Lampoon at the time, and he was asked to provide direction for the fledgling project in addition to his Lampoon duties. He created the original Heavy Metal logo design at the request of Len Mogel and Matty Simmons and was responsible for the launch and art direction from the first issue. He continued to oversee the design and work on the cover designs for the first two years and hired Art Director and Designer John Workman who brought to the magazine a background of experience at DC Comics and other publishers.
After two years, Mogel felt the lack of text material was a drawback, and in 1979, he replaced Kelly and Marchant with Ted White, highly regarded in the science fiction field for revitalizing Amazing Stories and Fantastic between 1968 and 1978. White and Workman immediately set about revamping the look of Heavy Metal, incorporating more stories and strips by American artists, including Arthur Suydam, Dan Steffan, Howard Cruse and Bernie Wrightson.
White's main solution to the problem of adding substantive text material was a line-up of columns by four authorities in various aspects of popular culture: Lou Stathis wrote about rock music and Jay Kinney dug into underground comics, while Steve Brown reviewed new science fiction novels and Bhob Stewart explored visual media from fantasy films to animation and light shows.
In 1980, Julie Simmons-Lynch took over as editor, and her new slant on text material was the showcasing of non-fiction by well-known authors such as Robert Silverberg, John Shirley and Harlan Ellison. Later, a review section labeled Dossier, was created by associate editor Brad Balfour, who came on board to handle text features by authors such as William S. Burroughs and Stephen King. Dossier featured short pieces by a variety of writers, and was edited first by Balfour and then by Stathis, who soon replaced Balfour as an editor. Stathis continued the tradition of focusing on pop culture figures to connect the magazine to the larger hip culture context. There were also interviews with such media figures as Roger Corman, Federico Fellini, John Sayles and John Waters. Beginning with the winter of 1986, Heavy Metal dropped back to a quarterly schedule, continuing until March 1989, where it then switched over to a bi-monthly publication period. Original Design Director Peter Kleinman was brought back on staff and Simmons-Lynch remained the editor until 1991 when Kevin Eastman acquired the magazine and became both publisher and editor.
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Famous quotes containing the word editors:
“The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Narrowed-down by her early editors and anthologists, reduced to quaintness or spinsterish oddity by many of her commentators, sentimentalized, fallen-in-love with like some gnomic Garbo, still unread in the breadth and depth of her full range of work, she was, and is, a wonder to me when I try to imagine myself into that mind.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The trenchant editorials plus the keen rivalry natural to extremely partisan papers made it necessary for the editors to be expert pugilists and duelists as well as journalists. An editor made no assertion that he could not defend with fists or firearms.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)